


Sunken Dreams and Engine Grease

by Origamidragons



Series: Seven Memories [2]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 12:40:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6154036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Origamidragons/pseuds/Origamidragons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He couldn't help but believe he was destined for greater things for perhaps a fraction of a second before brake fluid dripped into his eyes and he had to scrabble blindly for a greasy rag to rub them dry, and then the moment was gone and he was just that kid under a broken-down old wreck of a car, fixing it with surgical precision.</i>
</p>
<p>Young Leo oneshot, part of Seven Memories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunken Dreams and Engine Grease

He cocked his head to one side, examining the ragged gash in the metal, looking at it from every angle. Dark oil and grease seeped from the crushed guts of the car, pooling on the ground of the garage, indistinguishable against the filthy surface. A wide grin split the boy's soot-stained face as he twirled the wrench deftly in his hand. His mom wouldn't be back for a few hours yet. She was busy, busy fixing up the neighbor's tractor with the badly-maintained engine block.

She'd walked there. They were broke at the best of times, and had never been able to afford a car of their own, nor had she ever had enough free time to build one. So this was a surprise for her. He spun the wrench again before dropping to his knees and diving into the metallic innards of the broken wreck.

Broken down engine, torn brake lines, clogged exahust and enough rust to choke anything up, busted undercarriage and, of course, the massive rips down the sides. He slid back out and darted around the garage with the practiced ease of one who knew exactly where everything was, an accomplishment in the dirty, cluttered mess he called home. A rag, hammer, wrench, welding gear, bolt cutters and a hundred other things nicked and worn from endless loving use, the leather-bound handles tattered and stained with sweat and oil.

The boy's hands moved in a blur and time became a meaningless, abstract construct as he worked, all the hunger or exhaustion that always seemed to plague him simply gone, shoved away as the task at hand focused his scattered mind in a single direction and pushed. He wasn't good at much. He was good at making people laugh and he was good at this. He was scrawny, he was short, he was poor, and his classmates never ever let him forget it.

The problem with people, he mused, is that they care too much about stuff like that.

It didn't help that the boy didn't really get people. He'd spent his life so far here, in this garage, dirty and hot, underneath countless iterations of this same busted car. Maybe the hubcaps were missing, maybe it was a gas line rupture or a dead spark plug or a flat tire or a burnt-out engine. It didn't matter. It was still the same car getting dragged back in under someone else's power and lying limp on the concrete floor like a wounded animal until the boy bandaged its wounds and sent it on its way. Then within a day or two, it'd be back. Different make, different model, different driver, same busted car day in and day out.

He wondered suddenly if that was going to be his life. All of it. Todos mi vida. That same car rolling back in, him patching it up and collecting not enough money and rolling it back out and seeing it come back again and again and again.

It was childish and stupid like everything else he did (the teachers said so) but he couldn't help but believe he was destined for greater things for perhaps a fraction of a second before brake fluid dripped into his eyes and he had to scrabble blindly for a greasy rag to rub them dry, and then the moment was gone and he was just that kid under a broken-down old wreck of a car, fixing it with surgical precision.

He might not get people, but at least he got machines.

As the car whispered in his ears how it was sick and how he could make it better, a language of groans and squeaks only he could seem to understand, he heard the wooden crack of a baseball smashing into a bat echoing outside the walls of the garage where the sun was beating down on the bright green grass and the sky was a cloudless blue and he couldn't go out there because he had work to do and even when he finished there was more, there was always more and it was going to be his whole life and-

-and he realized all of a sudden that he was on his feet and there was a dent in the hood that hadn't been there before and a tire iron slowly melting in his flaming hand and he dropped it like it had burned him which was silly but-

-but then he was on the ground too, hugging his knees to his chest with tears drawing thick clean stripes through the perpetual grime that coated his face and watching with sullen disinterest as the molten red metal cooled and hardened with a mold of his hand that would never come out set in the middle, a constant reminder of how out of control he was and he'd seen the way she looked at him when she came home and his hands were slowing burning through the table and she was scared.

But there was no point crying about something when you can't do anything about it, so the boy dried his tears and hiccuped and got back to work with the wrench shaking in his hands, heavier than it had been before, he was sure of it.

Then when the sun had sunk down, down, down below the hills and out of sight, his mother came home, yawning and rubbing at her eyes, and he ran out of the garage and met her halfway and her tired face lit up when she saw him.

_Mi hijo._

_Everything's going to be just fine._


End file.
